‘I feel like I was born for something that my body can’t do’: a qualitative study on women’s bodies within medicalized infertility in Italy

Abstract

Objective

In the context of infertility, women’s bodies have a central physical, psychological, and social role. Medically assisted reproduction (MAR) treatment includes highly intrusive procedures targeting women’s bodies. This study aimed to develop a preliminary understanding of women’s core meanings around their bodies within their experiences of medicalized infertility in Italy.

Design

104 Italian women dealing with infertility and MAR treatments answered open-ended questions, which were part of a broader online survey. A reflexive thematic analysis was performed.

Results

Three themes were identified: (a) the paradox of the body: ‘I feel like I was born for something that my body can’t do’; (b) ‘Something only mothers can do’: meanings attributed to the physical body; (c) Internalized ‘clinical gaze’: medicalized body representations.

Conclusions

This work provides insights into the meanings assigned to their bodies by Italian women dealing with MAR. This study outlined women’s ambivalence towards their bodies, describing them as ‘fragmented’ into parts and as ‘deposits’ of their reproductive hopes. Results suggest that Italian pronatalist culture may have potential fallouts for women’s gendered sense of self and the integration between their biological and psychosocial body experiences. Study limitations, future research directions, and clinical implications are presented.

Keywords:

• Women
• body
• infertility
• medically assisted reproduction
• thematic analysis

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all participants for their efforts. We also thank Camilla Pellicelli for her skillful assistance. We also want to express our gratitude to the reviewers and the journal editors for their great contribution to improving the paper.

Authors’ contributions

Study design and conceptualization: VC, CF. Data analysis and interpretation: CF, CM, VC. Manuscript drafting and revision: CF, CM, VC. All listed authors made substantial direct and intellectual contributions to the work and approved it for publication.

Data availability statement (DAS)

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [VC], upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.